Posted by : Lizzie on 05/02/2010 at 14:39

Cap-Haïtien, the city where our House of Blessings is based, has welcomed home refugees fleeing the earthquake-ravaged capital of Haiti. Family members, whether close kin or distant relatives, have been welcomed and offered safe shelter, food and water. Our partners have been busy opening their hospital and health clinic to refugees and providing medical care to all who need it.

Our House of Blessings continues well despite the earthquake. Most members of staff have welcomed back some members of their family, although others have lost many of their family in Port-au-Prince. Our night staff told us they have lost 9 members of their family. I can’t even begin to imagine how awful it must be to lose so many of your family in one fell swoop.

The media have broadcast news of the many, many children orphaned and disabled by the earthquake. We have informed the UN we are a home for lost, orphaned or displaced children, especially those now disabled as we are one of the few places in the country with the facilities to care for disabled children. We will keep you updated as and when new children arrive at our home. In the meantime, we will continue engaging with local churches in Haiti and encouraging and enabling them to set up more facilities for disabled children.

Thanks to your overwhelmingly generous responses to offer your time and medical skills, we have a huge number of medical personnel who are now staffing our partners hospital facilities in the north of Haiti. Haiti has been flooded with medics rushing to the rescue, at present there is an excess of medical relief workers in Port-au-Prince in the south. We are unable at this time to accept any more volunteers. We will continue to monitor the situation, and will let you know if the need changes.

We told you in December of our determination to set up a project for street children and restaveks who are so in need of our help. Government help was almost non-existent and there were few international charities who were working in this area. Now, what few local charitable organisations were working with street children have had their projects completely destroyed by the earthquake, seeing all their good work crashed down as rubble in the streets. With buildings completely demolished, these local organisations will need as much support as they can get to rebuild their programmes and this is where we want to first turn our focus. Amidst such devastation, what hope can we have of setting up and establishing an entirely new project? The Haitians are the experts here, they know what life is like for the street children and restaveks and they too suffered through the quake. They are the ones who will be able to advise us best on the most immediate needs, and with your support we can start rebuilding Haiti, with the focus, as it should be, on the most vulnerable.

Next month, I will be visiting Haiti once more to meet with those organisations I met in December and see where our support is most needed. There are many large emergency aid organisations who stepped in in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. We are not experts in disaster relief and are so grateful to these organisations for their quick large-scale response in recovering survivors from the rubble and providing emergency food, water and medical supplies. Our expertise lies rather in long-term programmes, designed to endure and to continue supporting vulnerable children long after the media spotlight has turned elsewhere and the emergency aid agencies have moved on.

Thank you all so much for your incredible generosity which makes it possible for us to support these children who are so much in need of our help. In order to deliver the long-term support that they really need, these children need your continued support. Even as Haiti fades from your TV screen and front page headlines, please, don’t forget this tragedy which has rocked an already faltering nation.